Electronic communication devices, such as cell phones, base stations, global positioning systems (GPS) are ubiquitous in everyday business and personal use. Among the many communication applications/systems are: fixed wireless, unlicensed (FCC) wireless, local area network (LAN), cordless telephony, personal base station, telemetry, mobile wireless, and other digital data processing applications. While each of these applications utilizes direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) communication protocols, they generally utilize unique and incompatible spreading and modulation protocols for signal transmissions. Besides the spread spectrum communication protocols, time division multiple access (TDMA) communication protocols also exist, along with upcoming air interfaces such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). And each communication protocol may require unique hardware, software, and methodologies for transmitting signals from a communication device. This practice can be costly in terms of design, testing, manufacturing, and infrastructure resources. As a result, a need arises to overcome the limitations associated with the varied hardware, software, and methodology of transmitting digital signals that are unique and incompatible between each of the various communication protocols.
Furthermore, each given communication protocol can have incremental improvements that yield existing software, hardware, or infrastructure obsolete. This practice can be costly in terms of design, testing, manufacturing, and infrastructure resources. Consequently, a need also arises to overcome the lack of forward compatibility associated with incremental improvements in communication protocols.
Transmitter hardware is utilized by the various communication protocols to perform functions such as assemble data, scale its power, scramble its data, and modulate it onto a carrier signal. Within a given communication protocol, a significant quantity of channel formats can be designed for communication between devices. For example, in some communication protocols over fifty different types of channel formats are utilized to communicate the data, control, and status information between multiple communication devices. Given the dynamic environments in which communication systems operate, the quantity of different types of channels actually needed by a given communication device is always changing. However, if these different channel formats are implemented on transmitter hardware that is unique to the format of the given channel, or class of channel, it may not be compatible to process other channel formats. Thus, transmitter hardware unique to some channel formats may frequently sit idle while transmitter hardware for other types of channel formats is totally consumed. Thus, there may be a mismatch in the quantity of transmitter resources designed for the different channel formats, and the quantity of transmitter resources needed in actual use. For example, too many resources may be designed for voice channels, while there may be insufficient resources designed for pilot channels. This mismatch can translate into a capacity-limiting factor for a communication device due to a shortage of resources for one or more types of channel format. Thus a need arises to overcome the potential mismatch between transmitter resources designed for a specific channel format and the changing transmitter resource demand in a given communication device.
Transmitters can send data signals to one or more antenna for transmission to another communication device. However, if a communication device establishes a hard-coded relationship between transmitter resources and antenna resources, then the application of the communication device may be limited. For example, a hard-coded device not designed specifically to accommodate space diversity transmission may not be able to communicate using this protocol. Furthermore, if the sector boundaries, distribution of antenna within the sector, or quantity of overall antennae were modified for a communication device, then the transmitter resources and interface between the transmitter resources and the antennae may require an entirely new design. Additionally, if an antenna has a limited amount of transmitter resources coupled to it, then its transmission capability may be limited, even though transmitter resources tied to adjacent antennae sit idle. If additional transmitter resources are provided to accommodate growth, they may still be limited to the antenna in which they are hard wired and unavailable for combined application to a given critical antenna. The limited flexibility of a fixed interface between transmitter resources and antenna resources can be inefficient in terms of limited capacity of a device and in terms of redesign, infrastructure costs and time delays to accommodate new designs for new applications. Thus a need arises to overcome the limitations of fixed interfaces between transmitter resources and antenna resources.
One conventional solution to linking transmitter resources to antenna resources is a crossbar switch that allows transmitter resources to couple to different antennae. However, the crossbar switch is costly, complex and switch intensive. And given the unpredictable manner in which data is transmitted over antennae, e.g., due to the mobile nature of many wireless communications, there is a frequent demand to change switching relationships between transmitter resources and antenna resources. Consequently a need arises to overcome the limitations of a cross bar switch in selectively coupling transmitter resources to antenna resources.
If data is ‘pushed’ through the communication device into the transmitter, then it may cause contentions and bottlenecks, which are an inefficient use of hardware resources and may cause reduced performance and dropped calls. Pushing data means that an upstream resource controls the transmission of the data to downstream resources. To avoid cumulative power spikes arising from simultaneous transmission of concurrent channels, e.g., using high power pilot signals, a system can monitor and manage the timing of channels provided to the transmitter to ensure they are staggered. However, this technique can require complicated and inefficient overhead in terms of associated monitoring hardware and software. Additionally, the push data paradigm can cause system interrupts and idle hardware if upstream resources have exceeded downstream resources and a bottleneck of data arises. Thus, a need arises for a method to overcome the limitations of pushing data through a communication device to the transmitter.